Checkered Past

Two legendary Car and Driver project cars spend the day in a match race of memories.

April 2007 By AARON ROBINSON Photos By MORGAN SEGAL

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Once the Pinto was lowered and stiffened and suspension-tuned, this semaphore for the gas lines of the 1970s and the death of fun became a combat weapon. It suffered flat tires, a holed sump, and a power deficit — "It always made me feel like a real donkey," Bedard wrote in March 1975 — but the controls were light and direct, and it cornered as if on hockey skates. In only its second race, the Pinto took a victory at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the 1974 challenge series. On the track, years ago, briefly, this Pinto was a giant killer, or at least a BMW and Gremlin killer.

For Bedard, a slew of race-car projects, including these two, were important steppingstones. In fewer than 10 years, they led him from driving-school student to the starting grids at Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500, a feat almost as inconceivable then as it is today.

After Car and Driver project-car stories are written and the pages printed, the cars are usually sold or scrapped or otherwise churned up in the magazine's wake and never seen again. Until recently, no one on staff (or retired from it) had seen the Pinto since late 1974, when the editor-in-chief ordered all the race cars to be sold. Not long after, thieves cut a hole in the New York garage roof and stripped the shop of valuables. It was shut down by 1976.

Most of the magazine's project cars have stayed gone. But one came back quite unexpectedly, leading to this day in Phoenix. It began as a phone call to Sherman in 2005 by Robert Leier, who claimed to own Car and Driver's Pinto. As Leier explained to Sherman, the Pinto ran a handful of races in 1975 and then was parked for 30 years, eventually landing in a rented garage in Leesburg, Virginia.